Storied By Josh

“It’s always cold here.”

She didn’t say much and I held her hand as it rained big drops of rain. It was as if the sky was trying to drown the world, but it wasn’t and I knew it, but it didn’t matter because I still felt that way. Her hood was pulled tight around her face and she was still beautiful to me with her face just barely sticking out past the edges. The water caught the edge and dripped down her cheeks. I wasn’t wearing a hat or hood or anything. I’m not quite sure why. Probably because I thought I looked better without one or some damn thing. All I know is that it was hard to see her and it irritated me.

 

“Where do you want to go?” She didn’t know and neither did I. She was leaving soon and I knew it and she knew it but it didn’t matter because we had each other for now. Except that it did a little I think.

“Let’s go to get some coffee.”

“Where?”

“There’s a place up here.” It was a nice quiet little shop with a Russian woman who served us. They had tried to make it a little nicer and modern. It had been popular for a while but the Russian woman’s daughter had started serving everything too sweet and people stopped coming. It was fine with me. I hate popular places and the type of people who go there. The type of people who “liked this place before it was cool to like it.”

 

We enjoyed our coffee and talked for a while and I made her laugh and her smile made me warmer than I had been. She told me about the last summer and what she had done. The smoke from the forest fires had been irritating to her but the foreign people who she had met were good for a conversation and a laugh. The flying biters weren’t so bad this year and she had only resorted to wearing her head net a couple of times. My summer had been one of disappointments. My company made promises they weren’t able to keep and I resembled what HR people called “disgruntled employee.” I wasn’t going to burn the place down or anything but maybe. Everyone is an anarchist when the rules don’t work for them. Anyway I hadn’t made enough money.

“Can you afford this cup of coffee?”

“Maybe but I’ll have to go without toilet paper for a couple of weeks.”

“Oh dear.”

“No it’s fine. I have dirty t-shirts.”

“Gross.”

“Practical.”

 

We finished our coffee and walked back with a biscotti each. I threw mine away because it seemed like an overpriced bread thing but she ate hers. She liked calamari too and that was disgusting.

“Everyone likes calamari.”

“That’s not true. I don’t.”

“But you’re weird.”

She held my hand and her fingers were cold but her cheeks were red. She told me her nose was cold and she nuzzled up to my neck. I love you I whispered and she loved me back. The rain didn’t come down as hard now and she let her hood down and her hair had been highlighted by the sun as its blessing. They say some children were born under the sun and some were born under the moon and I don’t really know what that means but I’d bet you she was the sun’s child if there ever was one. She would come back to me sometime when Jesus was born and after for a little but I’d need to find her after that. I would because how does a man not search for the diamond?

The grass still grew green because it was early in the fall but the air knew that winter was coming and it told us. I missed the warmth and she did too but we tried our best at night to make it like summer again. We failed but happily so.

“Will you love me when it is winter and lonely?”

“Yes. Will you love me?”

“I will love you any season.” I wanted to love her then and there but she was elegant and wouldn’t so I kissed her and she held my hand and we laughed some more at the nothings that seem so important at the time but they aren’t until they are all added up.

 

We got home and she made dinner while I wrote this and after I stayed and we held each other because we knew that it was going to be all lonely again like it was in the summer but worse. She was going somewhere warm and I promised this was my last time in the cold. She knew I meant it but life has a way of not caring what your promises are so she wisely smiled and hoped but didn’t hold me to it.

 

I remember when she left on a flight and it was so far but I knew I would wait. And it made me angry because why should I wait? Then I would talk to her at night when it mattered and I remembered why I would wait.  Some nights I would drink too much and then I would try to drown the world.